Danish research in organic farming

Throughout the 1990s a major transition from conventional to organic farming occurred in Denmark. While organic farming in 1990 accounted for less than 1 percent of the cultivated land, the 2002 pro-portion has approached 7 percent. Typically, the conversion has occurred on relatively big farms with a large production. For example, organic milk amounts to app. 10 percent of the total milk production in Denmark.

It is fair to say that Danish consumers in many ways have driven this expansion. The most popular product is fresh milk, where the organic proportion amounts to almost 30 percent of the total con-sumption. But also the Danish government has sustained the development of organic farming with support to transition, regulation and control, advisory service, education, and research relating to or-ganic farming.

Framework for research

The public support was planned through the preparation of national policies (action plans) for organic farming. As a direct result of the first action plan the Danish Research Centre for Organic Farming (DARCOF) was founded in 1995 with the objective to provide the overall framework for Danish re-search on organic farming.

The remit of DARCOF is to coordinate Danish research in organic farming, with a view to achieving optimum benefit from the allocated resources. Its aim is to elucidate the ideas and problems faced in organic farming through the promotion of high quality research of international standard. The research should ease the transition from conventional to organic farming, while encouraging a sustainable devel-opment of the economic, ecological and social aspects of agriculture.

Organisation and assignments

DARCOF is a "centre without walls", which is to say that the researchers remain in their own research environment but collaborate across institutes. The collaboration currently implicates about 140 research scientists working at 20 different research institutes.

A board of directors consisting of research leaders from the central research institutes leads DARCOF. To ensure the relevance of its R&D activities, including contact with the various user groups, a user committee has been appointed with representatives from farmers associations and NGOs within or-ganic farming.

In relation to the mentioned objectives, the centre management at DARCOF has a number of assign-ments; especially within coordination, education, Research methodology, Knowledge synthesis and Communication & mediation.

Besides initiating and coordination of R&D in organic farming the centre generate scientific informa-tion relating to organic farming, communicate of research findings to the organic farming community, contribute to the education of research scientists, and support the Danish participation in the interna-tional research collaboration.

Research facilities

In DARCOF a series of unique research facilities are set up to provide opportunity for conducting dif-ferent projects simultaneously, using the same research fields, herds, etc. This allows close co-operation between different research environments, with a high degree of interdisciplinary collaboration, synergy, and complementary research.

The facilities include, long-term organic crop rotations, organic workshop sites, organic research sta-tions and agreements with private organic farmers who make their farms available for research.

Completed and current research

From 1996 to 2000 33 research projects at a total cost of app. 15 million EURO were carried out within the framework of DARCOF. The research provided new knowledge on the possibilities for es-tablishing sustainable and productive organic production systems.

Following the conclusion of the second Danish Action plan for organic farming “Action Plan II – De-velopment in organic farming” in 1999, a new major research initiative “DARCOF II” was initiated. The remit of DARCOF II is, in accordance with the conclusions of the action plan, “To produce knowledge that can be used to promote increased production and a closer relationship between the inherent and organic qualities of organic foods”.

The initiative, which last from 2000 to 2005, has a total value of app. 28 million EURO, and it consist of 42 major research projects. A description of the individual projects can be found on www.darcof.dk along with information on research findings, publications etc.

In coming issues of DARCOFenews we will focus on the findings in the individual projects.